събота, 27 ноември 2010 г.

Keeping Gaming Simple

Hello, fellow readers and welcome to another installment of my blog!

That was really corny, I, I apologize.

It's just that I have spent the last several hours being extremely geeky and I guess it kind of affects me. It's just that when you spend your time watching Minecraft tutorials and reading Zork walkthroughs, you kinda forget what actual human interaction is like. I know you all think I am awesome as hell but it may surprise you that I very easily forget how to be cool after watching more than four Nostalgia Critic and Angry Video Game Nerd episodes.

Okay, so maybe it's time to explain the references. Minecraft is a game - an indie game to be exact (that's really awesome if you ask me, when I hear the term "indie" I never think of games but it kind of makes sense) that my brother introduced me to. It's a very simple and addictive waste of your time - kind of a sandbox world where your entire goal is to survive and build stuff. You can harvest all kinds of materials like dirt, wood, stone and iron and craft them into instruments and furniture, weapons and armor. And you better make those last two because you're going to need them come nightfall. It's the time all the monsters come out and shit gets real.

Anyway, as I said, it's a pretty addictive game despite its simple look; and by simple, I do mean simple - it's an 8-bit game so it's not for everybody, I guess. But personally, I find it comforting - like I'm a kid again, unable to get up from that chair and do something useful for a change. And then my brother comes in and tells me that it's been two hours already and it's his turn to play. Ah, yes, those were the times when we didn't have a computer for every flat surface in the house. But I digress.

Zork is also a game but one when you don't really do anything. You just have to read and type from time to time. Like remember those books that we borrowed from the library that were called gamebooks? Anyone? No..? Hm. Well, they were also called "choose your own adventure books" which allow you to participate in the story by making choices that affect the course of the narrative. According to Wikipedia they were popular in the US about 30 years ago but the 80s didn't come to my country until a decade later so they were all the rave when I was a kid. Zork gave me the opportunity to relive those times again - and let me tell you, it was awesome. It remind me of simpler times when logic was the best weapon and it was all one needed to be a hero. Maybe I should mention that as I'm writing this my brtoher is killing Nazi zombies with what I can only describe as a weapon which even The Hulk would have trouble lifting. But hey, to each his own, right?

I would tell you who the Nostalgia Critic and the Angry Video Game Nerd are but I really don't feel like it today. Besides, maybe the best strategy is to save them for an entirely different post - ah, and maybe they would read it and thank me with a comment saying that it would be great if I came for dinner sometimes... Cause in my fantasy they live together, you know.

So that's it for today. I hope you check out the games I recommended, post a comment if you already have and we can discuss Minecraft house designs.